A clear correlation has been established between a feeling of temperature and the wavelength of a color. Psychological research shows that the subjective experience of color temperature changes abruptly when the value above 120° CIELAB has been exceeded. The same sudden change occurs around 330° CIELAB (da Pos & Valenti, 2007). This connection appears to work grosso-modo cross-culturally (Hogg et al., 1969; Sato, Xin & Hansuebsai, 2003). There is a strong connection with the color temperature parameter cold/warm and the parameter far away/close by. Warm colors tend to come forward, while cool colors tend to step back. That is why wavelength and temperature are placed on the depth axis of the semantic space.

In a study of colour emotions for simulated interior spaces, Hogg et al. (1979) identified five factors, including dynamism, spatial quality, emotional tone, complexity, and evaluation. They found that emotional tone was connected with hue.

In the height dimension fits the lightness and the weight parameter. Research results support the earlier qualitative findings that dark colors appear heavier than light colors, while providing quantitative meaning to the terms dark and light. (Alexander & Shansky, 1976). Dark colors, when applied above the viewer, tend to press down or dominate. Because of their heaviness, the weight is physically sensed. 

Osgood's Research (1957) made a significant correlation between heavy and hard with big, while lightweight is sensed rather fine and small. “Now we know, from our factor analytic work, that up, small, light-weight and white tend to go together in meaning and metaphor as opposed to down, large, heavy, and black.”

Campbell (1991) writes Dawn, and awakening from this world of dream, must always have been associated with the sun and sunrise. The night fears and night charms are dispelled by light, which has always been experienced as coming from above and as furnishing guidance and orientation. Darkness, then, and weight, the pull of gravity and the dark interior of the earth, of the jungle, or of the deep sea, as well as certain extremely poignant fears and delights, must for millenniums have constituted a firm syndrome of human experience, in contrast to the luminous flight of the world-awakening solar sphere into and through immeasurable heights. Hence a polarity of light and dark, above and below, guidance and loss of bearings, confidence and fears (a polarity that we all know from our own tradition of thought and feeling and can find matched in many parts of the world) must be reckoned as inevitable in the way of a structuring principle of human thought. It may or may not be fixed within us as an “isomorph”; but, in any case, it is certainly a general and very deeply known experience. 

T-tests indicated that black was judged significantly heavier than the modulus assigned to white. Apparent weight is a decreasing non-linear function of value. Value and chroma are the major determinants of color weight. Apparent weight is a decreasing function of value and an increasing function of chroma. These results support the earlier qualitative findings that “dark” colors appear heavier than “light” colors, while providing quantitative meaning to the terms dark and light. The reason that colors appear to have different weights is not clear. Bullough (1907) first offered the reasonable suggestion that the apparent density of colors determines their apparent weight, just as the actual density of objects determines their physical weight. Color weight would then be another example of a synesthetic interaction between sense modalities, in this case between vision and kinesthesis. (Alexander & Shansky, 1976)

Light colors eg. pastel shades, are felt lighter in weight than dark colors. (Meerwein, 2007)

The chroma and activation parameters connect with the activating width dimension. The amount of chroma has an effect on activity (Miyamoto, 2003;  Hogg et al., 1979). The brighter the color, the more a sense of dynamism will arise (Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994). Passive feelings such as sadness and fear are associated with very desaturated monochrome colors, while active feelings such as happiness, surprise and anger are linked to bright and very contrasting colors (da Pos & Green-Armytage, 2007).